The Russellville School District will conduct a committee meeting today to begin scheduling safety audits for all the school buildings in the district.

Brad Kent, the vice principal at Russellville Middle School who will lead the audit effort, said that the audits will analyze three sections of criteria: crisis planning, school layout and organization, and building policies, to determine if any of Russellville’s schools are in need of safety enhancements.

While the audits themselves aren’t new, Kent will head an effort consisting of a diversified team that includes teachers, administrators, parents and police departments on the state, county and city levels.

“We have several area agencies that are more than willing to help that are going to make these walkthroughs with our team,” he said. “We feel like as administrators and a school district as a whole, we have safe policies in place that make the buildings safe, so we aren’t expected to be shocked by our findings.”

Kent is a logical choice to lead the group conducting the audits, as he brings the best of both worlds to the school district as a part-time cop and a school administrator.

“In talking with Mr. Williams and with the resources we have, as well as my background as a principal and a law enforcement officer, we thought that would be the best fit for putting this team together,” Kent said.

Kent estimated the first building audits will begin next week and will take place during school hours.

“We’re going to limit disruption, but we need to see what it’s like when students are there,” he said. “It’s not going to do any good to go in there after hours.”

While Kent doesn’t expect to be surprised by the audits’ findings, he does anticipate an increased effort to educate school employees in crisis management.

“I think we will see additional training in all areas of crisis management, from the top down,” he said. “I think we’re going to take a proactive approach on additional training to try to make the comfort level of people who are carrying out the tasks in these situations higher.”

Kent said school district administrators began seriously discussing safety audits in mid-December, days after the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children dead.

But the discussions had been ongoing for some time before the shooting occurred.

“We actually started talking about the audit on a per-building level, before [the shooting] happened,” he said. “I know my building was looked at for training for different crisis drills.

“But yeah, absolutely, when something happens like the tragedy at Sandy Hook, every community nationwide goes through the recovery phase when you grieve for those people, and then the next stage is looking at what you do and preparing accordingly.”

Since Kent was appointed to lead the audit in December, he has been drafting an audit form, which lists the aforementioned criteria the group will use to review the schools.

“We expect to have every building audited along with our findings and recommendations in a full report within a month’s time,” he said.

And with new safety technology constantly being developed, the district could begin conducting these audits annually rather than intermittently.

“I think these audits are something that will be done on an annual basis from now on,” he said. “Because you always feel with the technology coming out on a regular basis, you have to keep looking at these policies because everything is getting better.”

Kent stressed that the safety audits are not an acknowledgment that their current safety standards are lacking.

“This is probably the first time that people are going to hear that we’re doing this, so I want our parents and community members to know that we feel like we have really, really good things in place,” he said.

“We’re confident with what we have in place, but we’re going to be very proactive in improving areas we need to.”